Entertaining these views, it was determined to open negotiations with the Sioux Indians north and northwest of the purchase of 1830, the neutral ground, so called, with the purpose of purchasing sufficient territory beyond the reasonable limits of Iowa to provide a resting place for the Winnebagoes, intending to treat also with the Sac and Fox Indians and with the Potawatamies north of the State of Missouri, and thus enable our citizens to expand west of the Missouri River north of the State.

It is difficult to state in a condensed report all the reasons now imperatively urging the adoption of these measures.  Besides the absolute necessity of providing a home for the Winnebagoes, the citizens of Iowa and of Missouri are crowding upon the territory of the Sac and Fox Indians and already producing those irritations which in former times have led to bloody wars.  It is not to be for a moment concealed that our enterprising and hardy population must and will occupy the territory adjacent to that purchased in 1837 from the Sacs and Foxes, and the only possible mode of its being done in peace is by another purchase from those Indians.  But the position of the Potawatamies will then become relatively what that of the Sac and Fox Indians now is, with the difference that access to their country by the Missouri River will hasten its occupancy by our people.  The only mode of guarding against future collision, near at hand if not provided against, is by emigrating not only the Sac and Fox Indians, but also the Potawatamies.

Great efforts have been made to induce those Indians, as also the Winnebagoes, to move south of the Missouri, but without effect, their opposition to it being apparently insurmountable, the Potawatamies expressing the most decided aversion to it on being urged to join other bands of Potawatamies on the Marais de Cygne, declaring that they would rather at once go to California, being determined not to unite with those bands, but to maintain an independence of them.  By the purchase from the Sioux no doubt is entertained that their prejudices may be advantageously accommodated, for among the objects in contemplation before adverted to it is to my mind of primary importance so to dispose of those Indians as to enable this Government to interpose a State between the Northern and Southern Indians along the Missouri River, and thus, by dividing the Indians on the frontier and separating the divisions, prevent a combination and concert of action which future progress in civilization might otherwise enable them to effect in the prosecution of revenge for real or imagined grievances.

Great importance is attached to this view of the subject, but scarcely less to the means provided by the treaty for inducing the remnants of other Northern tribes to remove to a climate congenial to their habits and disposition.